Alexander
Litvinenko (a.k.a. Alexander Volkov, a.k.a Chris Reid,
a.k.a Edwin Redwald Carter) was born in Voronezh, Russia
in 1962. He spent most, if not all ,of his career
in the intelligence game. At the age of 24 he was assigned
to the KGB’s military counterintelligence unit,
where he worked to recruit Chechens as spies for the
KGB. In 1996, his operation involved intercepting contraband
moving from Georgia to Chechnya, an activity which brought
him in contact with the smuggling rings that were truckloads
of arms to the Chechen rebels. When the KGB became the
FSB, he moved to its newly-created Department for the
Analysis of Criminal Organizations, which kept track
of the connections between businessmen and Russian organized
crime. Under Yeltsen, he was put in charge of protecting
top businessmen which brought him in contact with Berezovsky.
At one point, gun in one hand and FSB card in the other,
he prevented Moscow police from arresting Berezovsky
as part of a murder investigation. In 1998, he exposed
the plan of a rival faction in the FSB to assassinate
Berezovsky. Litvinenko was fired from the FSB and, without
a trial, imprisoned. When he was released in 2000, it
was on condition that he surrender his passport and
remain in Russia. He escaped to the Republic of Georgia
in October 2000 and crossed into Chechnya. According
to Russian officials who investigated his 2000 trip,
his mission in Chechnya was to"to eliminate evidence
of Boris Berezovsky's involvement in funding illegal
armed groups there." He then crossed into Turkey,
using a false passport in the name of "Chris Reid,"
From Turkey, with the help of Berezovsky and Alex Goldfarb,
he arranged to get to England by boarding a flight from
Istanbul to Moscow on November 1, 2000 with a stop-over
at Heathrow, where he disembarked. In London, he was
financed by Berezovsky’s foundation and worked
ceaselessly to discredit Putin. He co-authored Blowing
Up Russia which alleged that Putin’s FSB, not
Chechen rebels, had blown up six Russian apartment houses
in 1999, and killed some 300 residents of those buildings.
Putin’s motive for blowing up Russians, according
to Litvinenko, was to create a pretext for his planned
re-invasion of Chechnya. His book Gang From Lubyanka
claimed that Putin was deeply involved in Russian organized
crime. Litvinenko also alleged that that Putin’s
FSB had trained Osama Bin laden’s partner, Ayman
al-Zawahiri, in 1998 in the Caucasus, and that the 2002
seizure of a Moscow theater by Chechen women was organized
by "FSB agents among the Chechens."
Litvinenko’s close connection with the Chechen
rebels– he converted to Islam on his death bed–
led to establish contacts with the Chechen rebels who
Russia alleged were the 1999 bombings and who taken
refuge in the Pankisi Gorge no-man’s land on the
Georgian border. After obtaining a contact number from
a former associate in the FSB, Litvinenko traveled to
Georgia under the alias “Edwin Redwald Carter,”
where he sought a meeting in the Pankisi gorge. He also
used his contacts with the Chechen rebels, some of which
may have dated back to his KGB counterintelligence work,
to facilitate ransoming a kidnapped British banker.
Because of his connection, he was retained by a British
security group, Titan International Ltd, which was a
subsidiary of Erinys International Ltd. He told Goldfarb
that the company, “was run by ex-Secret Service
officers.” His job there may have also included
introducing Russian visitors to his British principals.
According to Vyacheslav Zharko, a Russian official,
Litvinenko introduced him to in 2003 was Pablo Miller,
who then recruited him as a British spy.